Not too long ago, I posted a blog about the Buddy Stubbs Motorcycle Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. Sue and I visited it for an upcoming Motorcycle Classics magazine Destinations piece. While I was there, I saw a book about Buddy Stubbs (Motorcyclist Extraordinaire: Buddy Stubbs), and I picked up a copy. I finished reading it last night and I thought I’d share my thoughts with you.
Written by Tyler Tayrien (who also wrote Arena, a book about Sam Arena’s motorcycle racing career), I’d give it a solid 8 out of 10 points. The subject matter is superb; the writing and editing are good but not great. I already wrote about Buddy Stubb’s history, his dealership, and a bit of his background in my recent blog about the Buddy Stubbs Museum, so I won’t go into that in too much detail here.
What’s great about Motorcyclist Extraordinaire: Buddy Stubbs is that the subject of this book (Mr. Stubbs) has had such an interesting life. It would be hard for a book covering this topic to be dull. What’s also great about the book is that Buddy Stubbs’ racing contemporaries are the guys I followed when I was a teenager and a young man: Riders like Dick Mann, Gary Nixon, Cal Rayborn, Roger Reiman, Bart Markel, Kenny Roberts, and others. These guys were the kings of flat track, motocross, and road racing back in the day, and reading about them from another rider’s perspective made the book even more interesting.
Motorcyclist Extraordinaire: Buddy Stubbs has a lot of photos, and maybe that’s one of its weak points, but I can’t blame the author for that. Most of the photos (maybe all of them) were from earlier printed photos shot with film, I’m guessing many were shot in black and white, and these were scanned for inclusion in the book. It’s hard to get a decent image using that approach, but when working with these kinds of archival prints, there’s really no other way to do it. The downside is that many of the photos are grainy and lack clarity. That’s not intended to be a criticism; it’s just an observation.
Motorcyclist Extraordinaire: Buddy Stubbs covers Buddy Stubbs’ life, his experiences in buying and building up the dealership, his marriages, his automobile and motorcycle racing, his cars, and the motorcycle museum. Mr. Stubbs is in his mid-80s today. I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet him while I was in the dealership, but I did get an autographed copy of his book. That’s cool.
My minor criticisms aside, I think that Motorcyclist Extraordinaire: Buddy Stubbs is an excellent read. My advice to you is to pick up a copy. I think you will enjoy it.
Sue and I recently flew to Minnesota as part of Sue’s quest to visit all 50 states. I’d been there a few years ago for a business trip when I worked in the bomb business. We were having problems with a booster for one of munitions, and I visited the factory in Edina to seek assistance in finding the root cause. The factory was underground in an old Nike Hercules missile command center. It was a bit scary, being around all those explosives and the intermittent hisses from the air moisturizers (if the humidity dropped below a certain level, electrostatic discharges could induce inadvertent ignitions, hence the moisturizers).
This trip would involve no such scary bomb factory visits. In fact, there were a lot of cool things we saw in Minnesota. One was a Frank Lloyd Wright gas station.
Without setting out to do so, we’ve become a bit of a Frank Lloyd Wright website. We featured his architecture a couple of times already, once with an article by yours truly about the Fallingwater home in western Pennsylvania, and more recently with Joe Gresh’s recent piece on Taliesen West, the Frank Lloyd Wright desert home in Arizona. Architectural Digest magazine is not looking over its shoulder at ExhaustNotes, but it’s interesting that Mr. Wright’s genius has found its way into a motorcycle and gun blog.
So, about that Frank Lloyd Wright gas station: Sue found it while researching cool things to see in Minnesota. It’s a little out of character for Mr. Wright, you know, designing a gas station. It’s located in the small town of Cloquet. It came about when a guy who worked in the oil biz (a guy with evidently lots of money), one R.W. Lindholm, had Wright design a home in 1952. Lindholm liked it. In fact, he liked it so much that when Wright approached him about designing a gas station, Lindholm agreed. Lindholm wanted to beautify gas station design; Wright wanted to create a gas station that could be used as a community center and gathering place.
If that sounds goofy to you (and it did to me when I first read about it), think again. When I was a teenager with a GTO (a decidedly dangerous combination), I and all of my gearhead buddies used to hang out at Herbie Eckert’s gas station. Herbie was a kid in my high school class who’s Dad owned an Empire gas station in New Jersey. I hung out there most of the time with my GTO, Ralph Voorhees was there with his GTO, Bobby O’Connell was there with his Hemi Road Runner, Vernie Frantz was there with his 409 Chevy, and, well, you get the idea. It sort of seemed natural back then in the late 1960s. Yeah, the concept works: A gas station as a community center. Especially if you’re a community of gearheads. I don’t think that’s quite what Frank Lloyd Wright or Mr. Lindholm had in mind, but hey, it worked for us.
Wright’s gas station design was built in 1958. It was the only gas station ever designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and it’s still in use today. It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places. When we visited, the gas station was open, but the place was pretty much empty other than one other car that had stopped for the same reason we did: To take pictures. Frank Lloyd Wright’s design was a success in that his $20,000 gas station (four times the cost of a typical gas station in 1958), came into being, but it never realized Wright’s vision in becoming a community center. Maybe it’s because there were too many people like me, Vernie, Bobby, and Ralph hanging around the place. We must have scared them all away.
The Dream is perched on the new Harbor Freight lift and slowly coming apart. I’ve been busy with other projects so don’t freak out if it seems like progress is slow. It’s not me. It’s the environment I work in.
This installment involves a bit of inventory control. I need a decent front rim but all the ones online look just as bad as the rim I have. The parts bike front rim is bad too. They are sturdy and run true but lots of surface rust makes them look bad. I can get new rims on eBay, sold in pairs for around $200 delivered, but I only need one rim. Anyone want to form a syndicate and go halvies on some 305 Dream rims?
$20 kickstand. Sometimes I do it the easy way.
Both of the Dreams were missing their side stands and I debated making one from scratch. Just for kicks I went on eBay and some hero had a side stand for $20 so I bought it. It’s kind of like cheating but It would take me two days to make a stand.
Hopefully these seals will work, keeping the oil inside where it belongs.
I’ve also ordered a set of engine seals. I’ll have the engine side covers off to free up the clutch plates and clean the centrifugal oil filter can. Also I need to remove the alternator to gain access to the starter clutch as it’s hit and miss. I figure it’s a good time to replace the seals. The only one leaking at the moment is the shift-shaft seal but you know how it goes with old rubber. Twenty miles down the road another seal will start leaking. Then another.
Deez Nuts were tight as hell. It took me two days to get them loose.
Getting the Dream’s steering stem apart was an Ossa. The top lock nut was knitted to the cone nut and the thing was tight as hell. Much hammering, heat and penetrating oil was used over the course of two days. The steering stem nuts finally unwed and spun off by hand. All the bearings and races look good with no divots or flat spots to cause erratic steering. There was even soft grease still inside! Impressive for a 63-year-old motorcycle.
The Dream on the maiden lift.
I’ve got the frame off the engine now. It’s a fairly lightweight sheet metal construction. Kind of like a monocoque Norton but with a separate fuel tank. Honda copied a lot of ideas from German and British sheet metal frame manufacturers.
The Dream frame is light. Easy to lift off the engine for an old man.
The frame has a few dings to fix and the Dream is made from pretty thick metal. The dents are hard to get behind to push out. I’ll try the painless/paintless dent remover but I don’t hold out much hope as the frame is twice as thick as gas tank metal. If that doesn’t work I’ll get a stud welder and pull the dents with a slide hammer.
Kind of Kawasaki green for the new paint on the stand. Almost safety vest green. I had a can in stock.
Since I have a new, shiny lift I decided to clean up the old, rusty engine stand to match. I’ve had this stand since the late 1970’s and it’s had everything from a 4-Cylinder Volvo marine engine, many Chevy small blocks and a big, heavy, Ford 427-inch OMC inboard strapped to the thing. The big Ford was pretty bouncy. With the cast iron, water-cooled exhaust manifolds the thing probably exceeded the stand’s weight rating by 300 pounds. I used a 2×4 in the front to help stabilize the engine.
A few aluminum tabs and the Dream engine bolted right up. I’m going to do this method on the next MC engine I work on.
In all those years this will be the first motorcycle engine I’ve had on the stand. It makes everything easy with the mill at hip level. You can rotate the engine 360 degrees by spinning the T-handle. Which begs the question: why didn’t I think of this before?
I’m thinking heavy metallic with candy-copper followed by 2K clear. What are the odds it won’t bubble?
I hear you: not much progress but I’m a bit lame right now and taking it easy for a week or so. What about a 3-part metallic orange for a color? Too much? Atomic Green? Black, red or white is boring.
The alarm rang early last week, and Sue and I were on the road at 5:00 a.m., pointed east on the 210 for the 5 1/2 hour trek to Phoenix and the Buddy Stubbs Motorcycle Museum. It was worth the drive out there.
There are more than a few dealers who have a handful of bikes tucked into a corner of their showrooms they call a museum. Not so with the Buddy Stubbs Motorcycle Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. It’s the largest motorcycle museum in the American Southwest, and it’s one of the best motorcycle museums of the many I’ve visited over the last 30 or 40 years. I don’t say that lightly. This place is spectacular.
Many marques are well represented. This colors on this early ’60 Noron twin work for me.
Sue and I visited the Buddy Stubbs Museum recently for an upcoming issue of Motorcycle Classics magazine, and I sure was glad we did. The Museum has 137 bikes (with 124 on display). You might think they’d all be Harleys, but you’d be wrong. All the cool stuff is there, and it’s all vintage. Harleys, Triumphs, BSAs, Vincents, BMWs, Excelsiors, Indians, and a bunch more. It seems like every motorcycle in the Museum has a story.
The 1913 Indian Buddy commuted on between dealership locations.
One of the stories is about the 1913 Indian in its original unrestored glory. You might recall that about 25 years ago Harley made their dealers build new and modern showrooms. Buddy Stubbs was one of those dealerships, and while the new location was under construction, Buddy rode between the old and new locations daily on that 1913 Indian. That’s cool.
Buddy’s Cannonball Excelsior. All the spares rode in the sidecar and there was no chase vehicle.
Another bike with a story is the 1915 Excelsior, with sidecar, that Buddy rode in the 2010 cross country Cannonball Run. Okay, you might be thinking a lot of guys did that. Yeah, but…and the “yeah, but” in his case is that a 70-year old Buddy Stubbs made the ride with no chase vehicle. He carried all the parts he thought he might need in the sidecar. Wow.
Yes, it’s the actual Electra-Glide in Blue. The real one that we all saw in the movie.
Remember the 1973 Electra-Glide in Blue movie? Buddy taught Robert Blake how to ride a motorcycle for that movie, and the motorcycle that Blake’s felonious motor officer buddy bought with stolen money (in the movie, not in real life) currently sits in the Buddy Stubbs showroom. Blake went on to a successful TV series (Baretta), and then he fell from grace when he murdered his wife (which he got away with in the criminal trial, although he was later found financially liable in a subsequent civil case). It’s tough to convict a movie star here in the Golden State.
The black T-Bird (second from right) was The Wild Ones backup bike.
Speaking of motorcycle movies, the grand-daddy of them all has to be Marlon Brando’s The Wild One. You will recall that Brando rode a Triumph Thunderbird in that movie. The producers kept a spare Triumph Thunderbird on set during the production. You know, just in case. That spare T-Bird is in the Buddy Stubbs Museum.
A four-cylinder Nimbus. It might have made it into our ¿Quantos Pistones? series had I seen it sooner.
There’s a whole section here on ExNotes focused on our dream bikes. Satisfyingly, several of those are in the Buddy Stubbs Museum, including lots of Triumph Bonnevilles, Harley Cafe Racers, and the Harley XR1000.
By any measure, Buddy Stubbs (who at age 85 is still with us) is an amazing man. You can even buy a book about Mr. Stubbs, which I did while visiting the dealership. I have a signed copy.
A chile relleno tamale. Muey bueno!
Hey, one more thing that I’d be remiss to not mention in this blog. Stop for lunch at the Tamale Factory, which is just 8/10ths of a mile up North Cave Creek Road from the dealership. I had the chile relleno tamale and Sue had the chicken version. Both were fantastic.
As the Sixes go, there have been a few: The Honda CBX, the Kawasaki KZ1300, the Honda Gold Wing, the Honda Valkyrie, the Benelli Sei, and the BMW K1600. This doesn’t include any custom engined bikes, and there have been a few. This blog is long enough already, so I’m leaving out things like bikes with three Triumph 650 Twin engines. All the bikes included here were factory offerings.
Honda CBX
The year was 1979, and I was riding a Triumph 750 Bonneville I bought new in Fort Worth, Texas. We had a Honda dealer in town that had a demo CBX, and I went over there as soon as I knew the dealer had the CBX in stock.
A 1971 Honda CBX, like the one I ruptured.
In those days, dealers of all kinds of bikes allowed unsupervised test rides. Very few dealers, if any, do that today, and for good reason. There are guys out there that will ride the snot out of them. I was one of them back in 1979. I picked up the CBX (a beautiful silver one that was essentially a naked bike; this was before Honda put the big fairing and bags on the CBX in 1981), and I headed out to Loop 820. Loop 820 (as the name implied) looped around Fort Worth. I lived on the west side of town out near the General Dynamics plant where I was an engineer on the F-16.
Loop 820 in those days way out on the west side of Fort Worth was a traffic-devoid area, and that made it a favored spot for top speed testing. My ’78 Bonneville would top out at an indicated 109 mph on Loop 820 (I think I’m past the statute of limitations on that moving violation, which is why I’m sharing this with you). Naturally, it was where I took the CBX. The bike had something like 6 miles on the odometer, but I didn’t care. The magic number? 131 mph. Yep. I was a speed demon back in the day.
When I brought the bike back to the dealer, I put it on the sidestand with the engine still running. It squirted oil arterially out the left side of the forward cam cover. It squirted in spurts, like it had a heart pumping it out. “How’d you like it?” the enthusiastic sales guy asked, and then he saw the oil orgasming out the top end.
“I didn’t,” I said. “I mean, look at it. It leaks worse than my Triumph…”
So I didn’t buy that CBX, but I never abandoned the idea of owning one.
My 1982 Honda CBX. Bone stock. Impressive. Fun to ride.
Maybe 20 years later I stopped at Bert’s, a huge local Honda/Suzuki/Yamaha/Kawasaki (and maybe a few other makes I can’t remember) dealer. He had a 1982 CBX on the floor. It was a used bike with just 4500 miles on the odometer, and he wanted $4,000 for it. It was beautiful. Completely stock, it was pearlescent white with turquoise and black accents. I stopped twice but couldn’t quite bring myself to pull the trigger. Then I stopped in a third time and it was gone. Rats. Missed it. He who hesitates is lost, and I had hesitated.
I asked about the bike and was told some rich guy from Japan had bought, and Bert’s was putting new seals in the forks, installing a new air filter, cleaning the carbs, and doing a general servicing on it. Lucky guy, I thought.
Then I stopped in a fourth time and the bike was back on the floor. The sales guy on duty in Bert’s used bike department was a nice old guy who told me he won the Daytona 200 in 1956. Did he really? Hell, I don’t know. We didn’t have the Internet yet. But none of that mattered. The ’82 CBX was back on the floor and it was now $4500. I could get my checkbook out fast enough.
Six pipes, six cylinders, six carbs, 24 valves, double overhead cams.
I had a lot of fun with the CBX, riding all over California, Nevada, and Arizona with it. I put 20,000 miles on the bike. I even road to the Laughlin River Run one year, where it drew more stares than any of the cookie-cutter wannabe rebel yuppie EVO-engined Harleys.
On the road near Bagdad. Bagdad, Arizona, that is. That’s my buddy Louis and his Gold Wing. Louis went into witness protection and has since taken to wearing a shirt.
I loved the bike, but I decided it was time to sell it a few years later. A friend offered me $4500, which is what I had paid for it and about what they were going for in those days, and I sold it. I wish I still had it.
The Honda Gold Wing
Somewhere in its history (actually, it was way back in 1988, which surprised me), the Honda Gold Wing became a flat six displacing 1520cc. I think they are up to something like 1800cc or maybe a million cubic centimeters by now. I never rode a Gold Wing Six and I never had a desire to own a Gold Wing (one short ride on Louis’ Wing, a Four, convinced me that Wings are crafted of boredominium).
A Wing Ding Six. I think there’s a bathroom with a shower somewhere in there.
None of the Wings in any denomination ever appealed to me. I know that modern Gold Wings are impressive and fast and handle well (for a battleship) and all that. The whole Wing thing just never appealed to me. Never has, and never will.
The Honda Valkyrie
The Honda Valkyrie used the Gold Wing engine and it was, I think, supposed to sort of compete with Harley. I liked the idea, and I thought I wanted one, so I went back to Bert’s and looked at one on the showroom floor. Fortunately for me and my wallet, I rode my ’92 Harley Heritage Softail there. The Valkyrie looked good, I thought, until I went back out to the parking lot and saw a new Valkyrie that someone had parked right next to my Softail. Both bikes had windshields and saddlebags, so it was a good side-by-side comparison.
The Honda Valkyrie. If you were wondering, a Valkyrie is a female warrior figure from Norse mythology. She worked for Odin and chose dead warriors on the battlefield, and then guided them to Valhalla
That visual comparison is what drove a silver stake through the Valkyrie’s heart for me. I couldn’t believe how big, porky, and bloated the Valkyrie looked next to my Softail (and the Softail was not a small machine). The Heritage Softail just looked way more svelte, nimble, and sexy. That killed it for me. No Valkyrie would ever live in my garage.
Like the Gold Wing, there were two iterations of the Valkyrie – a 1520cc initial offering and then later an 1832cc version. The Valkyries were known for their atrocious fuel economy, although I can’t imagine anyone who bought one worried about that. They were huge bikes.
The Kawasaki KZ1300
Shortly after Honda introduced the CBX, Kawasaki introduced a 1300cc, water-cooled monster they called the KZ1300 (I think that’s what they called it). Unlike the Honda CBX (whose production run lasted only from 1979 to 1982), the KZ1300 stayed in the Kawasaki lineup for several years. I don’t know why.
The KZ1300 fell from the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.
The Honda CBX (even though it was a Six displacing 1050cc) looked nimble, lean, and mean. The Kawasaki looked like a bus or maybe a dump truck to me. There was nothing elegant or graceful about it. I wanted no part of it. I’ve never ridden one.
Benelli Sei
Benelli jumped on the air-cooled inline 6 theme with their Sei models. They were good looking bikes, but they looked (at least to me) like a copy of the Honda CBX. As copies go, the CBX wasn’t a bad thing to use as a starting point, but to me, the CBX was a far more attractive motorcycle.
The Benelli Sei. It’s pretty, but I like the Honda CBX more.
The Sei was offered at first as a 750 and later as a 900. The Benellis were made from 1973 to 1978. I think I may have seen one or two Benelli Sei motorcycles, but I can’t remember where. I never rode one and I had no desire to. The CBX spoiled me.
As an interesting aside, Benelli is one of those interesting companies that made both guns and motorcycles. I have a rare Benelli 9mm handgun, a pistol that didn’t make it commercially but is delightfully complex and fun to shoot. Benelli also makes rifles and shotguns. Motorcycles marketed under the Benelli name are today manufactured in China.
BMW K1600
The BMW K1600 series of luxo-barges are (as the name implies) 1600cc motorcycles. They have inline (across the frame) six-cylinder engines, with the pistons at a steep forward angle.
BMW K1600. Where’s the engine?
There’s a K1600 GT and a K1600 GTL. I think the L stands for luxury. Or maybe it stands for loaded (which is what I’ve have to be to ever purchase one of these 750-pound land yachts). Like most BMW products, the K1600s are outrageously priced, a situation made worse by tariffs.
These bikes, I think, are unnecessarily laden with electronics and other silly features. A few years ago when the K1600 first hit the market, I was in a BMW dealer chatting with the marketing manager. He was multitasking during our conversation. The other thing he was doing? He was trying to figure out how to use a K1600’s electronic ignition key for a bike he had just sold. BMW North America was on the phone, and the guy on the other end was similarly perplexed. That made four of us who couldn’t break the code on how to use the key (BMW NA, the dealer’s sales manager, the bike’s new owner, and me). I was the only one of the four who didn’t care, as I wasn’t going to ride the bike. Ah, the good old days…when a key was just a piece of mechanically-notched steel that you stuck in the bike’s ignition lock and turned.
So there you have it: My take on the Sixes. So is this it? We’ve done singles, twins, triples, fours, Fives, and Sixes. Surely there can’t be more.
Hey, don’t call me Shirley. Stay tuned. Yep, there are 7-cylinder, 8-cylinder, 9-cylinder, and more cylinders coming up. Stay tuned.
Missed our other ¿Quantos Pistones? stories? Here they are:
A few months ago Sue and I visited the Jameson Classic Motorcycle Museum in Monterey, California, for a Motorcycle Classics “Destinations” article. It was a marvelous museum in a marvelous locale, we had a wonderful time, Motorcycle Classics published the article, and I first learned of Emma Booton. Staci Jameson, heir to the Jameson museum collection, explained that several of the bikes on display had been lovingly restored by Emma Booton, whom Staci described as a “restoration goddess.”
I’m currently working on another Motorcycle Classics set of articles featuring how to do different motorcycle maintenance activities, which led me to seek Emma’s advice and, hopefully, to photograph her activities as she did some of the things I would be writing about. Well, I hit a home run there, too. Emma was very willing to support the activity, so Sue and I did another run up to the Monterey Peninsula to visit with Emma at her Moto Town shop.
Emma has a sense of humor, as this photo in her shop demonstrates. That’s Emma on the right.
Emma and I spent a great morning together as she worked through a series of activities on a vintage Honda dirt bike and I snapped away with my Nikon. Emma is a wonderful teacher with a delightful British accent and a very keen sense of humor. It was fun and I enjoyed every second of it.
Emma Booton’s resto mod Triumph Trident. I want it.
While all this was going on, my eye wandered to the other bikes in the shop, and one in particular was visually arresting: A resto mod Triumph Trident. I asked Emma about it and learned it was one of her personal bikes. The bike has been poked out to 900cc, it has larger diameter forks and dual disk brakes, bigger carbs, transistorized ignition, a hotter cam, an oil cooler, and lots more.
I asked Emma if the colors were the stock Triumph purple that was available in those early 1970s Trident days. I remembered that Triumph had a purple, but Emma’s bike was much more vibrant than any Triumph I remembered. “No, dear,” came the answer in that vibrant British accent (aurally matching the Trident’s stunning purple paint). “I knew I wanted purple, but not the Triumph purple, which wasn’t very uplifting. I looked and looked and looked and couldn’t find exactly what I wanted, and then I saw it…the purple on a Roto Rooter truck! I call it Roto Rooter purple!”
Call Roto Rooter, that’s the way…
There weren’t any Roto Rooter trucks nearby, and on the long drive back down to So Cal, Sue and I diligently scanned the other cars and trucks we saw on the road, but we didn’t see any Roto Rooter vehicles. A quick look on Google Images struck paydirt, though, and we saw it. Emma was right. She nailed it: Rotor Rooter purple!
Emma and yours truly.
I would dearly love to own Emma’s Triumph. Not many motorcycles reach out and grab me like that, but the Trident you see here sure did. It’s a good feeling.
In prior ¿Quantos Pistones? posts, I wrote about engines with which I had personal experience. When dealing with five-cylinder engines, though, I cannot do that. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a five-cylinder motorcycle. They exist, though, and I found them by poking around a bit on the Internet. The best source was Wikipedia, which lists several. I used Wikipedia as the basis for further research, and I went beyond that to include others found online.
The Straight Fives
These fall into two categories: Custom-built motorcycles created from stock bikes, and Honda’s 1960s small displacement Grand Prix racing motorcycles.
Honda built the RC148 (the first edition of their 125cc inline five-cylinder, four-stroke engine), and the RC 149 (which was a further development effort). The RC149 is reported to have reached speeds of over 130 mph. It had an 8-speed transmission and the pistons must have been about the size of thimbles. Well, not really. This engine was originally based on Honda’s 50cc twin (can you imagine such a thing). Take two and a half 50cc twins, throw in some Honda pixie dust, and voilà, you get an inline 125cc 5-cylinder GP bike. It must have been exciting, being an engineer at Honda back in the 1960s.
Here’s a video I found of Honda techs evaluating an RC149 on a Honda test track. If you like listening to engines wail (their, um, ExhaustNotes), you’ll enjoy this one:
There have also been custom straight fives fabricated from other engines. Here’s one based on the Kawasaki three-cylinder 750cc two stroke:
Those bikes must have been impressive, too. I thought I once saw something on the Internet about a similar custom Kawasaki 900 (you know, like Gresh’s old Zed) that had been cobbled into an inline 5-cylinder machine, but I couldn’t find it again. Maybe it was in a dream.
Honda’s V-5 GP Bikes
Honda was the only player in the V-5 game, and they only did so on their GP bikes in the early 2000s. That bike was designated the RC211V. Everyone else used either a V-4 or an inline four.
The reasons are very technical, but they all boil down to two advantages:
The V-5 engine was actually smaller than either a V-4 or an inline four engine, and
The V-5 engine had an inherent power advantage over the other four-cylinder engines.
The above is explained well in the video below.
The Verdel Radial 5
Here’s one that has a bit of controversy about it: The Verdel radial 5-cylinder bike:
Some have written about it as a rare, 1912 motorcycle, but it’s not. It was built in Britain by an engineer in the late 1990s. A notable motorcycle museum bought it thinking it was a genuine vintage motorcycle (Verdel did exist, but the company made aircraft engines, not motorcycles), and apparently the museum has since acknowledged that this never was a production motorcycle from Verdel. It kind of looks the part, so it’s easy to understand how the museum fell for the vintage bike story. The ground clearance and those two cylinders hanging out from the bike’s undercarriage just scream for a skid plate.
Go Puch Yourself
Sorry, I couldn’t resist that (every once in a while, my New Jersey roots emerge). Back to the story: Here’s another interesting 5-cylinder custom motorcycle assembled by a talented builder using Puch moped engines.
Uwe Oltman (that’s the builder’s name), a guy in Germany, assembled the custom you see above from five Puch 50cc (actually, 48.8cc) moped engines.
The info I found says the bike is pretty much an unrideable showpiece due to the noise and heat from the five Puch 2-stroke engines. They’ve been poked out to 70cc each, so I guess that makes this creation a 350. As design exercises go, I think it’s cool.
Megola
I first heard of this from a friend who had a conversation about rare motorcycles with Jay Leno. Mr. Leno has a Megola in his collection. The Megolas were German bikes from 1921 to 1925 in Munich. The name is combination of its designers’ names (Meixner, Gockerell, and Landgraf).
Megolas are about as weird as motorcycles can be. The engine’s five cylinders rotate around the front axle, with a 6-to-1 transmission that cuts the axle rotation to one sixth of the engine’s speed. The 640cc engine ran at 3600 rpm, which turned the front wheel at 600 rpm, which provided a top speed of about 60 mph. There’s no clutch, so when a Megola rider came to a stop, so did the engine. The owner’s manual suggested riding in small circles if you didn’t want to shut the engine off. Weird, huh?
So there you have it: The Fives. Next up in our ¿Quantos Pistones? series will be (you guessed it) the Sixes. That one will be easier, as I owned a Honda CBX a few years ago. Stay tuned!
Ah, missed a couple! I thought I had them all, but then I found this video, and it identified a couple more 5-cylinder bikes. Take a look; it’s worth a watch!
Missed our earlier ¿Quantos Pistones? stories on the Singles, the Twins, the Triples, and the Fours? Hey, no problemo! Here they are:
Fours? I’ve owned a few, and Lord knows I’ve sure seen a bunch of them. For starters, there’s the 1931 Excelsior-Henderson at the top of this blog (a photo that graces every one of our ¿Quantos Pistones? blogs). It’s not mine and I didn’t ride it. I was so interested in photographing that motorcycle, I didn’t realize I was standing next to Jay Leno until he took his helmet off. I’ve written about that encounter before.
Honda CB 750
When the Honda CB 750 Four came on the scene in 1969, it turned the motorcycle world upside down. I thought the bike was interesting before I saw one, but I also thought I was a 650 twin kind of guy (you know, Triumphs and BSAs). The first 750 Four I ever saw accelerated past my house when I was way younger. It was a gloriously visceral and symphonic four. To a guy used to lopey Harleys and throaty Triumphs, the CB 750 sounded like an Indy Offenhauser. When I heard that high performance four-cylinder yowl, it was like walking through the jungle on a moonless night and having an unseen leopard suddenly scream a short distance away. It reached deep, took hold, and shook me mightily. I remember it like it happened yesterday. At that instant, I knew I would own a 750 Four someday soon. And I did.
Yours truly in the 1970s. Hard to believe it was more than 50 years ago. I loved that motorcycle.
Our family bought our motorcycles from Cooper’s Cycle Ranch in Hamilton, New Jersey. The CB 750 was $1539 out the door (I can’t remember what I had for lunch earlier today, but I remember that number), and my 750 was the color I wanted. Honda offered the 750 Four in four colors in 1971 (brown, green, gold, and candy apple red). I wanted a red one, and Sherm Cooper made it happen. It was a glorious bike. I rode it to Canada with a fellow Rutgers student (Keith Hediger, who had a white Kawasaki 500cc triple). That was my first international motorcycle trip. I rode it a lot of other places, too. It was a wonderful motorcycle. I wish I still had it.
Honda CB 500
I owned two Honda CB 500 Fours. I bought one from good buddy John who was a high school and college classmate. I only put a few miles on before putting it on my front lawn with a for sale sign. It sold quickly. I liked the bike (it was very smooth), but I needed the cash for something else (I can’t remember what).
Good buddy John and the CB 500 I bought from him.
A similar opportunity popped up decades later when a guy at work had a metalflake orange CB500 for sale at Sargent Fletcher (an aerospace plant I ran in the 1990s). Metalflake orange was a factory color on the CB 500 Honda. At $500, I figured I could take a chance. I bought it, rode it a little bit, never registered the bike, and sold it with a Cycle Trade ad a couple of weeks later.
Suzuki Katana
This was a bike way ahead of its time. Wow, was it ever fast. In 1982, the performance was incredible. It would probably be tame by today’s hyperbikes, but back in the early ’80s, it was something else.
Me and my Katana. I still had some hair in the 1980s. Not much, but some.
Take a good look at that photo. The ’82 Katana you see above is the only vehicle (car or motorcycle) for which I ever paid over list price. When it first came out, it was pure unobtanium. Suzuki only made 500 initially. I think mine was No. 241. I paid $5500 for it, which was way over list price in 1982, and I had to go all the way to Victorville to find one.
I thought I had something special, but that only lasted a month or two. After the initial limited release, Suzuki made another 500, bringing the total number to 1,000. I found that troubling, and I felt cheated. Those sold quickly, too, so Suzuki went ahead and produced yet another 500. Those last 500 didn’t sell well at all (Suzuki had reached all the fools like me by then and the market for a bike like the Katana had been saturated). Suzuki had to discount the remaining bikes heavily to move them. That really pissed me off. It would be another 15 years before I would buy another Suzuki (that was my ’97 TL1000S). The way I was buying and selling bikes in those days, that was a long time.
The Katana was my first ever superbike. It was scary fast in 1982, and it would probably still be scary fast today. Thanks to Joan Claybrook and Jiminy Carter (remember those two?), the speedo maxed out at 85 mph (as if that would somehow slow anyone down).
The pipes were one of the coolest things on the Katana. They were what Suzuki called black chrome and they looked great. The instrument pod was cool, too. The tach and speedo needles moved in opposite directions, which made it seemed like the two needles were unwinding as you rowed through the gears. This was my first ever bike with low bars. I didn’t like them, but the rest of the bike was very, very cool. I sold the Katana when my first daughter was born. A fat lady knocked it over in a shopping mall pulling her car out of its parking space. I took that as an omen. Time to step away from riding for a bit. I wish I still had that motorcycle.
Suzuki went on to use the Katana name (a Katana is a Japanese Samurai sword) on other models, but they were never the same at that first 1982 Katana.
Triumph 1200 Daytona
This was a fun machine. I bought when it was still brand new (but already 7 years old) on Ebay, thanks to an alert from my buddy Marty. It was $7,000. As soon as I won the auction, the next highest bidder contacted me and offered to buy it, but I turned it down.
The Locomotive. This was one of the best motorcycles I ever owned.
I’ve written about the Daytona before, and rather than reinvent the wheel, I invite you to read the more complete Daytona story here.
Honda Gold Wing
Back in the day, the initial Honda Gold Wing was a four, as they continued to be for several years. I thought I wanted one when the Gold Wing was first introduced (I was in Korea at the time and I saw the new Gold Wing in a Cycle World magazine). But I never acted on the urge to buy one and that was a good thing. I rode a friend’s a few years later and the bike had no soul whatsoever. It was boring beyond belief; I would not have thought any motorcycle could be that boring. But it was and it made me glad I never bought one.
Somewhere in Arizona on a road trip in the ’90s. That’s my CBX (to be covered in a later ¿Quantos Pistones? blog), my buddy Louis V (who went into the witness protection program), and Louis’s Honda Gold Wing (the most boring motorcycle I ever rode). All the gear, all the time was definitely not Lou’s motto.
Guys who have Gold Wings seem to love them. Emilio Scotto rode one around the world and wrote a great book about it. Today, of course, Gold Wings are sixes. I’ve read that the handling on the new ones is great for a big bike. But they’re not my cup of tea. You may feel different about Wings, and that’s okay.
So there you go: My experiences with four-cylinder motorcycles. The configuration makes sense from a lot of perspectives. They can be powerful and they are an almost universal configuration on Japanese motorcycles. But they’ve grown too big for my liking. I know there have been smaller fours out there (the Honda CB350 Four comes to mind), but as I’ve matured (read: become a geezer), I like smaller bikes better. As always, your mileage may vary.
Missed our earlier ¿Quantos Pistones? stories on the Singles, the Twins, and the Triples? Hey, no problemo! Here they are:
At this point in my life, I realize it’s an itch I’ll probably never get to scratch: The need to own a Moto Guzzi. It started back in the early 1970s, when I was exploring rural northern New Jersey on my ’71 CB 750 Honda (yes, there were and still are rural parts of New Jersey). I had stopped for gas at a sort of combination general store and gas station when a pair of full dress Moto Guzzis rumbled by. I heard them first, before I saw them, and from the sound I thought it would be a couple of Harleys. Moto Guzzis sound a lot like Harley-Davidsons. Moto Guzzis were new in America, and these were the first I had ever seen. They burbled on by, leaving a lasting image and their captivating ExhaustNotes in my mind.
Ewan and Charlie, at it again. The Long Way Home is a good show. It somehow felt much more real watching these guys on older bikes battling the weather and old bike breakdowns. I enjoyed this one much more than the other McGregor and Boorman series.
So, about this sign from God business: A few days ago while channel surfing on Apple TV+, I saw another “Long Way” series from Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman. I had seen the other series from Ewan and Charlie and thought they were silly, almost an affront to real adventurers, guys like Dave Barr who had ridden around the world. You know, two dilletantes with more money than talent cashing in on the adventure motorcycle craze, versus Dave Barr, the real deal, a guy who rode around the world on his own dime on a trashed-out old Super Glide, one of the most unreliable motorcycles ever. Not finding anything more interesting as I brainlessly surfed through Apple’s offerings, The Long Way Home got a click from me. This time, the boys were on old bikes, an old BMW boxer and an old Moto Guzzi. It was the Guzzi that got my attention. I’m watching (and enjoying) the series. I’ll have a review of it posted here on ExNotes in the near future.
There can be no doubt about this shop’s focus on Moto Guzzis.
Then another thing happened. I visited Moto Guzzi Classics in Signal Hill and found myself in a sea of old Guzzis, like the stunning El Dorado you see at the top of this blog. Several of the old Guzzis were former police bikes, and I’ve always had a fascination for police motorcycles (I wrote a book about police bikes a few years ago).
Indeed they are.
Mark, the proprietor, specializes in bringing old Guzzis back to life. Mark doesn’t usually do 100-point restorations; Moto Guzzi Classics’ forte is in resurrections. You know, finding old bikes and getting them running again, kind of like Joe Gresh has done on his Zed and is currently doing on his Honda Dreams.
Mark let me snap a few photos of the 850 El Dorado and a former CHP police bike in his shop when I visited recently. It sure was fun.
Patina to an exponent. Mike Wolf and Joe Gresh would love this place.This is a good portrait-oriented moto photo. I like getting pictures framed this way, capturing both the engine and the gas tank.Another photo of the CHP Moto Guzzi. It’s strange, realizing that that guys who rode these bikes are all retired now.An old-school siren. It was powered by the rear tire. When the officer actuated the cable, the siren’s drive rotated into the rear tire. I used to have bicycle siren on my Schwinn when I was a kid that worked the same way (at least until the neighbors told me to knock it off).The El Dorado’s certified speedometer. These were calibrated at regular intervals in case an offender challenged the ticketing officer’s accuracy in court.The amber spotlights shown here were red when this bike was on active duty. Mere civilians can’t run police lights on their bikes.
So, about this sign from God business: I had to think that with all the Guzzi inputs occurring lately (The Long Way Home and the visit to Moto Guzzi Classics in Signal Hill), maybe it was a sign. Maybe there’s a Guzzi in my future? I thought so, until I realized there just aren’t any dealers around me to work on them. I think there’s one in Glendale, but Gresh and I had a bad experience with the Enfield provided by that dealer for our Baja adventure a few years ago. I think the next closest one is 120 miles away in San Diego. That was enough to sour me on the idea of a new Guzzi. But maybe a used one? Hey, who knows?
When I was younger (by a lot) I used to modify all my motorcycles. Different forks, different gas tanks, different wheels. I never left well enough alone. Until I bought a new, 1983 Honda XL600, I only had a few stock bikes. The XL600 was so good it started me thinking about why I kept messing with original bikes. And so I stopped.
I found the reason why the kickstart splines slip. The lever knuckle is cracked allowed the splines to expand when kicking. Luckily the spare engine has the part.
I pretty much leave motorcycles stock now. It’s a lot easier and quieter. Let’s face it: The bikes are more reliable stock. Reliability is important to me now. Along with resale value.
I’ve been polishing the turd a bit. The aluminum color is too bright, I’ll try something else but the bike should clean up and look decent.
Lately, the Dream 305 decision tree has branched off in a different direction. Getting the bike running was exciting but figuring out how to proceed has not been. What to do with this beast? If the engine was bad things would be easy: Part it out. But the engine is not bad.
The main issue is the low value of restored Dreams. A couple thousand bucks will get you a nice rider that needs nothing. My ’62 is an early model that has some cachet, but not enough to make much difference.
I was going to leave the bike rough and stock, just get it operational, but deep down, I don’t like the way a Dream looks. The engine is fine. I like the close-set fins, but It’s those fender flares. They make the bike look stodgy and old.
Front brake shoes are cheap and available for the Dream but rear shoes have a different mounting set up. At $38 each shoe I’ll be running the old ones. Hopefully the lining stays glued on and doesn’t come loose and lock up the wheel.
I’ll be the first guy to tell you don’t modify old bikes because it lessens interest and value, but what if the bike has little value to start with? I’ve decided the flares have to go. Kind of a return to my roots on a bike that isn’t in great shape.
The rear rim is in fairly good shape, and the new Kenda fit will. Neither of the front rims are very good. They are round and straight, but the chrome is shot. As this is a budget build, I may try some chrome spray paint just to get the bike on the road.
Hear me out: Modding this bike is not a big deal as I have a bit of metalworking to do on the Dream’s sheet metal frame and have decided to take the bike completely apart to allow easy access and flat welding.
The Dream has been down sometime in the last 60 years. I’ve tweaked the front fender straight-ish. A little welding and trimming will make it usable.The taillight area is kind of a mess. I’ll use the flare cut-off to supply original sheet metal when I plug this hole.
The front fender has a crack and the flare is bent; it will need some massaging and removing the flare removes one problem. The rear fender has a gaping hole where the taillight sat, and I’ll be welding that closed. There are a few dents that would be easier to beat out with the frame upside down. The bike won’t be original, but it won’t be far off original. And most importantly, I’ll like the way it looks. I’m shallow that way.
These square shocks are iconic Dream bits. No longer held to a high standard, I won’t be looking to replace the eroded plastic covers.
Things are hopping at the ranch, so I have made little progress (but not zero progress). Just having clarity, freedom and a plan saves on lateral moves.
